Religion and Philosophy in the Scientific Revolution

1
Religion and Philosophy in the Scientific
Revolution

• Patrick, Daniel, and John

2
It All Started With Copernicus

• De Revolutionibus- 1543
• Galileo
• Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems-
  1632
• Bible does not rule on the natural world, but
  concerns faith and salvation primarily.
• If a scientific observation conflicts with the
  Bible, the interpretation of the text must be
  incorrect

3
The Church I dont think so.

• Cardinal Bellarmine
• As early as 1615, Bellarmine had warned Galileo
  not to defend the Copernican model.
• All of scholastic history and the Church Fathers
  disagree.
• Who are you to interpret the Bible?
• Reinforcing the philosophical dominion of

4
ARISTOTLE

• Galileo disproved Aristotles laws of physics,
  among other aspects
• But Aristotle formed the basis for all scholarly
  work in the universities of Europe.
• Bacon Attack On Authority And Advocacy Of
  Experimental Science
• What justification can there be for this
  self-imposed servitude that you are content to
  repeat Aristotles after two thousand years?

5
Fighting Philosophies

• As a result of the times, Aristotle, the Church,
  and religious faith itself were questioned
  openly.
• The Protestant Reformation had already severed
  some ties between formal religious organizations
  and philosophic/theological inquiry.
• If truth does not come from the Church, where
  does it come from?
• Many thinkers proposed and revived different
  epistemologies, ways of arriving at conclusions.

6
RATIONALISM

• Human, internal reasoning is the best path to
  knowledge
• Logic and mathematics
• Deductive
• René Descartes
• Discourse on Method- 1637
• Baruch Spinoza
• Gottfried Leibniz
• Invented calculus independently of Newton

7
COGITO, ERGO SUM

• Descartes I resolved to seek no other knowledge
  than that which I might find within myself.
• Came up with four principles to finding rational
  truth,
• First is I think, therefore I am.

8
EMPIRICISM

• Natural, external observation is the best path to
  knowledge
• Experimentation
• Inductive
• Francis Bacon
• Novum Organum- 1620
• John Locke
• Thomas Hobbes
• Isaac Newton
• George Berkeley
• David Hume

9
Testing, 1,2,3

• The logic now in use serves rather to fix and
  give stability to the errors which have their
  foundation in commonly received notions than to
  help the search after truth.
• Knowledge must come from observation of the
  natural world.

10
FIDEISM

• Rationalism and empiricism are insufficient to
  understand the most major truths. Religious
  faith, or spiritual revelation, is ultimate.
• Martin Luther
• Extreme example
• But since the devil's bride, Reason, that pretty
  whore, comes in and thinks she's wise, and what
  she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy
  Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not
  doctors, no king or emperor, because reason is
  the Devil's greatest whore.
• Blaise Pascal
• Pensées- 1670

11
Pascals Wager

• You must wager it is not optional... Let us
  weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God
  exists... If you gain, you gain all if you lose,
  you lose nothing. Wager, then, without
  hesitation, that He exists.
• Pascal was brilliant mathematician, and rejected
  neither reason nor empiricism, but held them
  insufficient.

12
A Reasonable World

• Newtons Principia Mathematica- 1687
• Gravity governs both celestial bodies and earthly
  ones.
• God, the most intelligent mind of all, has
  created an inherently logical universe
• Triumph of reason
• However, no agreement as to whether rationalism
  or empiricism is superior until Immanuel Kant
  synthesizes them in 1781